The Dead Travel Fast

by Nick Brown

  He climbed a small rise behind the crowd; from there he could see men holding Antonis at the edge of a small grove of cypresses: they were stringing ropes from trees. He couldn’t hear Antonis from this distance, but could see he was trying to say something. He never got the chance, he was lifted off the ground and held upside down; nets were fixed to his ankles. Steve felt a sudden jolt from the terrible realisation of what was about to happen; he needed to vomit.

  Then, to his relief, he saw them: cops, two of them pushing through the fringes of the baying mob. But that was as far as they got; they were surrounded by wild gesticulating figures shouting in their faces and turned back. The crowd parted to let them out jeering as they went. He heard an old crone shout.

  “Don’t you want to see real justice, people’s law? Watch us kill the Devil in the old way.”

  There was cheering from those near to her. Steve watched the police withdraw, then pause, and he waited for them to call for backup. But they didn’t; they shifted into a patch of darkness at the tower’s base and lit up. The baying from the grove was augmented by a sound somewhere between a sob and a scream, and something in Steve snapped and he found himself hurtling towards the cops.

  “What’re you doing? Get in there and stop it, you can see what’s happening.”

  The older of the cops threw down the butt of his smoke; Steve could see strain etched into every line of the man’s perspiring face.

  “This is none of your business, English; they are right, justice is being done.”

  “That’s not justice, it’s murder.”

  “You think so? Then tell me how you kill a thing that’s not alive.”

  Steve, out of control, screamed at them.

  “Listen, listen to that sound, it’s a man in agony. Jesus, how can you stand there? You’re cops, you have to help.”

  They turned away, trying to ignore him.

  “I know your commander. Theodrakis. I have his number, I’ll …”

  He didn’t get any further. The younger cop grabbed him from behind and the elder took his jaw in one calloused hand, forcing him to meet his gaze. He could feel the fear pouring off them like sweat.

  “Last chance, English, you go now or we will take you to that grove and tell the men with the knives that you are the one fucking the Devil’s sister, what do you …”

  He never finished the sentence; the air was ripped apart by a screech of pain of such anguished volume that it cut straight through the howling and shouting. For a second there was silence, followed by some cheering; but not from the entire crowd. It seemed the atrocity of the death throes had shocked the humanity back into most of them. They began to melt away into the dark. Steve felt the rough hand release his face as the cops slipped away with the rapidly dispersing crowd and he fell to his knees.

  In an instant the place was deserted; Steve could see the empty grove. It was a site beyond Hell. Great, black, birds appeared from nowhere and perched on all the branches of the scrappy trees in some parody of a funeral vigil.

  Between the trees a burning brand left stuck in the earth flared and flickered, picking out the details with a shimmering clarity that no horror movie ever could match. From Steve’s position the detail was occluded and shifting, but it was impossible not to recognise what was hanging there. He climbed unsteadily to his feet and stumbled across the deserted space. He couldn’t help himself. The nightmare hadn’t ended at Skendleby; he was still walking through it.

  Nothing was real anymore, nowhere was safe. He tripped and almost fell, realised his eyes were closed then steadied himself and forced them open. Straight in front, not more than ten metres, Antonis was hanging upside down. He doubled over and wretched up everything he had ingested in the last twenty four hours in three convulsive heaves. Then he placed his hands over his eyes and wept.

  After an interval he couldn’t gauge, he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder, and on looking round saw he was staring into the face of the old man who had appeared when he had saved Antonis’s life.

  “I told you it would have been better to let him die. This thing hanging from the trees is your legacy. You should never have come here, but now you must look upon your accomplishment. Look and listen, perhaps he will still have something for you.”

  Steve was about to ask what but realised he was on his own; the man had faded but the words remained. He made himself look again at the thing in the trees. It reminded him of a painting he had seen as a boy, ‘The Flaying of Marysas’, but far worse.

  They’d used fish gutting knives to skin him: sharp but not designed for such delicate work. There must have been a few of them all cutting at once working from the knees downwards towards the face. The knives had taken more than skin, although there was enough of that hanging in bloody skeins that tumbled down over the top of the head. He hoped he’d never see such a strange mix of colours again. It didn’t resemble Antonis; it didn’t really resemble a human being, more like the sort of thing a Turner prize-winning artist might fuck about with and sell for a fortune.

  The face wasn’t as bad when he could make himself look at it, perhaps it had been too difficult or perhaps Antonis’s final dying shriek had come before they really got to it. As he was staring at the face, hoping he would faint or wake up, the dead eyes shifted their focus from the infinite to him. They did it with a snap, so quick it made him jump backwards about a metre. From there he watched, rooted in Hell, as the mouth opened and without the lips moving a voice said,

  “Where is Alekka? You must find her.”

  Chapter 21:

  The Warning

  Even before he ended the call with Giles, Vassilis was in his face.

  “That was about the bones? Can you fools get nothing right?”

  “The Englishman isn’t sure, he thinks they’ve been disturbed and some are missing; maybe only one.”

  “There only needs to be one missing for us to be ruined: it only needs the right one to give the charm its power, to make the Throat of Death live again. If that has happened.”

  He paused, and Theodrakis wasn’t sure if he was trying to control himself or because the news had dealt him such a heavy blow that he couldn’t respond. The idea the latter might be the case shocked Theodrakis more than he cared to admit, but he didn’t have to wait long; Vassilis pulled himself together.

  “If that has happened then I think we are all of us ruined. We must …”

  He was cut off by a streak of forked lightning striking the sea and a simultaneous deafening crack of thunder. Across the room a door burst open and Alekka rushed onto the terrace.

  “It’s not there, he couldn’t find it.”

  “Where’s Watkins?”

  “Steve’s gone; he thought I was going to hurt him, he rushed off in his car. I couldn’t catch him. He must be so confused and terrified. How could he think I would hurt him?”

  “Control yourself, you forget what you are. As for Watkins, at least he was consistent: useless to the end. You need to know that some of the recent bone harvest is missing thanks to the incompetence of that other vacillating English inadequate.”

  He turned to Theodrakis.

  “I must insist you work to my direction now, there is much about yourself that you do not know; I think over the coming days you will discover what you really are and why I brought you to Samos. Tomorrow you will bring the other Englishman to the site where it was hidden; he is also an archaeologist, although a lesser one. We can no longer depend on Watkins and we need to look for it thoroughly this time. It is not possible that it has gone, the conditions are not conducive for them to approach it after all the care we have taken.”

  Alekka began to speak and Vassilis turned on her.

  “Take that stupid look off your face. Accept what you are and what you need to do. Forget about the novelty of feelings; stop behaving like a lesser being. Tomorrow you will join them on that site and direct their actions. Theodrakis, go and find the Englishman, do not go back to Vathia, stay in the village wit
h your waitress. Stay with her grandmother; she is an ignorant peasant but does have some slight power that might help protect you. Come back at dawn, Alekka will meet you.”

  Theodrakis stared at him with his mouth open. He couldn’t understand how things had moved so fast or most of what Vassilis said. He began to empathise with how Lucca must feel. Vassilis turned and walked out followed by Alekka; as she passed, he thought he saw streaks of moisture below her eyes. He was left alone on the terrace; he had been given his instructions, now they had no time for him. Any of the resolve or clarity he felt as he’d begun his meeting with Vassilis evaporated. A large shaven-headed man moved, with a surprising lightness of foot, onto the terrace.

  “Your police driver was too frightened to wait: once the storm started he went. Follow me, I am to drive you.”

  He went with him and sat in a daze in the back of the limo as it purred its way down round the sharp bends towards the village. The storm must have been highly localised because in less than a mile the weather had reverted to beautiful early evening. The limo drove down onto the harbour front, basking untroubled in sunlight, and he was dropped off outside the bar: empty apart from Hippolyta sitting at a table talking with Captain Michales.

  When she saw him a look of pleasure lit up her face, which changed his gloom to temporary delight; even Michales directed a grimace at him which he correctly identified as a neutral greeting. She rushed between the tables towards him wearing old jeans with white T-shirt and flip flops; looking, to him, like a super model. She threw her arms round him and he felt himself shudder with the release of tension; the world was still alright if this existed.

  “Where have you been, Alexis? I am so happy to see you: Yaya Eleni said you must come to her, she has had a dream, a bad one full of omens.”

  The relief dissipated, there was some awful synchronicity here; how could Vassilis have known this? Could there be some link between him and the old crone? Hippolyta must have read his expression.

  “No need to worry, she has your safety at heart, she said you should stay there tonight, there is room, although I will have to share with her.”

  “Not the sleeping arrangements I’d been looking forward to, but she may have a point.”

  “Worse for me: you’ve no idea what sleeping with Yaya is like.”

  He tried to keep the image out of his mind, preferring to wonder at how easy their relationship had become.

  “And I’ve no wish to know either but first I must see the Englishman, Giles.”

  “He’s up at the ‘Olive Villas’ with that woman. Earlier on you could hear her moaning and screaming without shame at what she made him do to her, even down here.”

  “What time do you get off?”

  “Early: tonight will be even quieter than usual, now the German tour company has decided to take its customers home because of the troubles. I think I can leave anytime. When you have seen Giles come back here, I will feed you then we will go to Yaya Eleni.”

  She kissed him and he set off up the hill. Giles was sitting on a lounger by the pool; he looked tired and pale. Above he caught a glimpse of Claire, naked, flitting across the balcony. She flashed an unfriendly glance at him. Giles gestured for him to sit and he fetched a chair from a shaded arbour, not feeling a lounger appropriate to the conversation.

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of Steve; he went off last night and won’t answer his phone.”

  “Dr Watkins, it appears, has gone missing; he was with Alekka on the excavation site until about an hour ago, then apparently was spooked by the storm.”

  “What storm? It’s been fine all day.”

  “Dr Glover, Giles, why do I get the impression that you know a lot more than you are prepared to tell me?”

  “Because it wouldn’t do you any good and I’ve got enough problems as it is. We came here for a break, not this nightmare, although it seems to have given Claire a new lease of life, too much life maybe.”

  It seemed to Theodrakis that he added the last bit as an aside to himself; he reckoned if he said nothing, eventually Giles would tell him all he needed. He certainly didn’t look like someone relaxing on holiday; he looked like a man reaching the end of his tether. Both Englishmen seemed dwarfed by the women in their lives. He sympathised as he found Alekka and Claire in particular disconcerting. None of this added up, nothing on this island was what it seemed; like Prospero’s island, a mix of Heaven and Hell. But which was the illusion? He’d been right about Giles needing to talk, though.

  “Anyway, you know much more than you say too and this last year has taught me a thing or two about who to trust.”

  “Tell me then, who do you trust?”

  “Claire.”

  “Only Claire?”

  “Well, there’s a vicar at Skendleby; maybe him too.”

  “Well, now you need to trust me. Not only because I can have you arrested and then left to rot in gaol for a couple years and believe me, in the current chaos here, no one would find you. But mostly because, like Watkins, you’re confused and frightened because you depend on a woman who is metamorphosing into something you don’t understand and are beginning to fear.”

  He knew he’d hit the mark even though Giles said,

  “Not me, Claire’s not like that; Alekka maybe.”

  “Perhaps, but you need to get those bite marks on your neck and shoulders cleaned up, they’ll become infected.”

  He saw Giles blushing, and having made his point and further destabilised him he asked,

  “Where are the bones?”

  “Over there in the grove, about five trees in.”

  “The tree where those great black birds are roosting, I imagine?”

  “That’s the one; they’ve been there since the other night.”

  Theodrakis hated birds like these, filthy carrion, but he restricted his comment to,

  “Unusual, surely.”

  “Very unusual but not the first time I’ve met them. I don’t think they’re necessarily bad; I think they’re watching over the bones.”

  Unlikely as this sounded, particularly the use of the word met, Theodrakis let it pass; merely asked,

  “To prevent any more going missing? You are certain some have gone?”

  “I think so, I’m pretty sure one, at least, is missing. They’d all been disturbed and not by an animal. Somebody had gone through them carefully looking for a particular one.”

  “But only you and presumably Ms Vanarvi knew they were here.”

  “No, only me.”

  Theodrakis wondered what had prevented him from telling her.

  “Claire and I are the only ones staying here.”

  “Well, someone else obviously knew. This isn’t your first experience like this I think, am I correct?”

  “Sort of.”

  “That’s why you’re frightened and yet, remarkably, not surprised and, it seems you’ve kept this to yourself; not told Ms Vanarvi.”

  Giles looked uncomfortable and mumbled something about not wanting to worry her which Theodrakis dismissed as implausible but didn’t bother to contradict.

  “Giles, I’m sorry there’s no time for you to understand me better, but if you wish ever to leave this enchanted island you must do what I say. Tomorrow morning as rose-fingered dawn touches your villa I will collect you here. Be ready with the bones; tell no one, talk to nobody. One last thing, and I tell you this as a friend, don’t try to run: not only because my men would pick you up but because I think something far worse would get to you first.”

  Giles said nothing, just stared back at him, but Theodrakis knew he’d follow instructions: he had no choice.

  “If Watkins makes contact inform me at once. Having outlived his usefulness, he’s a dead man walking.”

  Giles nodded. Theodrakis stood up and moved off. As he passed in front of the house, he felt the woman watching him; it didn’t feel comfortable. The bar was still empty when he got back except for a middle-aged English couple attempting, and failing, to t
alk Greek to Captain Michales. Hippolyta brought him a dish of octopus with bread and horiatiki salad, the day’s special: in these straightened times it was every day’s special.

  He had no appetite but picked at the food to please her. He didn’t want to go straight to Yaya Eleni’s and, he suspected, neither did she. There was something else they needed, as much for comfort as anything else, so they went to her apartment. Afterwards they showered, dressed then locked the door and walked up the hill to the concrete oven for the night.

  The crone was waiting outside the door, drowsing in an old hard backed kitchen chair, but creaked to her feet as they approached. She greeted Hippolyta with a hug and some clucking sounds and ignored Theodrakis.

  “So, you have brought this one back: the one who has caused all the trouble. But then you have always been a headstrong, silly girl. Now go inside to the kitchen, I have things to tell your policeman.”

  Then she deigned to regard Theodrakis.

  “Before I let you in the house with my great granddaughter I need to check you for certain signs.”

  He struggled to control his fastidious disinclination when she cupped his face between her two leathery hands and gazed rheumy-eyed, at uncomfortably close range, at his face. While she was doing this he wondered how his father would react to the proposition of such an in-law, and in spite of himself giggled. Yaya Eleni took no notice except to remove her hands from his face. For a moment she put her two thumbs together with their palms pointing up and studied them carefully, then hawked and spat on them. Then, to his considerable disgust, she wiped the spittle across his eyelids and replaced her hands either side of his face. What happened then surprised them both: with a sudden grunting noise she pulled them away as if burnt and lurched back, an expression of shock on her wizened features.

  “You are not like other men: you are more like Vassilis. Perhaps that will serve you well.”

  “I thought you saw Vassilis as some type of Devil.”